Question

I’m trying to use reflection to access a custom assembly that I’ve created. Specifically I’m trying to access a public list of a structure that I’ve created. (It is a list of Holiday structures which define public holidays.) I’m sure I’m missing something basic but I keep getting this strange error in the IDE.

Dim f As New OpenFileDialog() With { ... }

Dim rgAsm as Reflection.Assembly
Dim rgType as Type
Dim rgDLL as Object

rgASM = Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(f.Filename)
rgType = rgAsm.GetType("rgReporting.rgReporting")
rgDLL = Activator.CreateInstance(rgType)

Dim holType As Type = modConf.rgAsm.GetType("rgReporting.PublicHolidays+Holiday")

If holType Is Nothing Then MsgBox("no.") Else MsgBox("yes!")

When I run the code above I get the “yes!” msgbox meaning that my type has been defined by GetType(). However when I try to write the following code:

Dim blah as holType

The IDE gives me this error: “Type ‘holType’ is not defined.”

I’m looking to use the type in a for each in the end, but doing that gives the same error. I realize I’m missing some basic step in defining the type as something that can be used but I can’t seem to find what it is.

Answer 1

You can’t do that. In order to define a variable like that of type holType it has to be statically defined. holType is a runtime type.

In order to create an instance of holType you can write:

Dim blah = Activator.CreateInstance(holType);